Misguided Priorities
by hiddleshakur
Summary: Snape survives the war, but he's left feeling angsty and alone. He decides to drop off the face of the earth, but no matter how he struggles to escape the aftermath of the war, he catches the eye of one sorceror. He ends up unknowingly involved in the mysterious god's plot against humanity, and is tormented by Loki's mischief. Fanfic deleted my intro, so Ch 1 begins in media res.
1. Derision

**NPOV**

He was there on the night of the killing, on the night of the Battle of Hogwarts, and the very next morning, when the people woke up from the illusion and opened their eyes to the destruction around them. There was little left of the courtyard, rubble churned up and statues toppled, and little grey hands stuck out, palms upturned as if searching for light, that same thin thread of hope and glorious sunrise be shed on their mangled, crushed, or prostrate bodies. All of the dead, if they would rise again, would outnumber the living souls remaining in the school by the very next morning.

It was an inglorious sight. Enough to make the children wail and weep all over again, the raw wounds ripped open with stinging sensations, and to make them ask _why_. Why would they go ahead and live on, while their little friends had been killed, or worse, maimed horribly, and some were too far from mortality that even through the valiant efforts of Madame Pomfrey, the school's head nurse, all their little bodies would do was bleed, bleed and bleed though the night. She didn't have the hart to end their misery, and couldn't do anything anyway when the others were like hawks, guarding their dying companions. They had a little hope left, and with hope, she thought, all would be well. Those were the poorest ones, who suffered and died. But then the dead could all move on, if they chose, onto that theoretical dimension where white stained their blood soaked hands and eased them of all penalty and guilt. And the living would suffer, and the living would suffer.

This is a story of suffering.

This is a story of candlelit paper and inkwells, and words written in calligraphic handwriting, and later smeared with droplets of water. These were chaste little droplets, falling from bent-over eyes and coupled with stricken groans and fierce moaning. But eventually all the letters would be cast into the fire, because that was the only source of light in the cold London home, and the only source of heat. He would never send those letters, and by the time he wrote them and plummeted into sadness again, and drank it all away afterwards, and in the hours of the morning wept for all his profligacy and imprudence, and when he woke up later, sober and dead inside, the paper would be too tear-stained to read anyway. The ink would have bled through onto the dark-lacquered table and he'd have dried it clean with his wand, which was the one possession that was his, truly and totally his.

He felt he had very little time left. So he cleaned up, resetting the firewhiskey on the shelves, mending the broken bottles and righting the shelves. With curses abound, he left his bed neat and tidy, drawing all the shades. Righting his spilt ink, he dabbed the quill in it and left the pen, dry with another muttered spell, on the table next to the single page of stationery entitled with the date of a random day in June.

He was one of the survivors, a figure in the multitude, but he was also one of the forgotten. And his story would never be told if I were not here to tell it. And it would get better for him, oh, it very well would. But a tragedy is naught without suffering, a hero nothing without the struggle, be it inner or physical, or in some cases, astral.

There are those who see races, who find weaknesses, find flaws in every separate being and in beings collectively. We either watch or we tamper, and I have been known to do both. In the case of this downtrodden fellow, I did both. And I did more. All it required was a little bit of insight on my part. But let me tell you that by casting my gaze to the high heavens I altered the course of the history of Earth, and the course of one single, powerful, puny human life.

Ah, but I intend not to bore you. That would be no fun, no fun at all. So listen well to this story, and hold in your heart my words, and in your mind the belief that fortune will favor this sad man. Eventually.

Oh, and his "last words" were a tad bit cliché. But not the way he said them, as if he really meant them, had meant to say them for more than seventeen years.

They all thought his dying breath had been spent on words he'd never once uttered, a compliment to the boy.

He had stood in the boathouse, the gentle swaying of the lake rocking the floor under his shoes. Rocking, rocking, back and forth. The sea was so calm, like the porcelain face of a doll. His face was drooping, his thin lips and dark eyes calm and still, there on his visage.

The snake slithered around her master's legs. She let loose a terrible, ominous hissing noise. His face did not change; it never did. Just the same sulking frown. But inside, he simmered with disgust for the reptilian creature. The Dark Lord cast a glance at his feet, where Nagini's smooth body coiled around his leg. And then he stepped closer to Severus. His cloak billowed and shimmered in the moonlight, its illusory effect magnified through the glass windows. There was a beautiful view of the lake at night that could be seen through those windows. On a clear night, you could see the moon's reflection on the water and the hills in the distance, the trees dotting the landscape. The castle sparkled at night with its pointed shoulders to the sky.

However, tonight was not a night to marvel at the landscape. For tonight the light came not from the sky, clear and black as it was, but from the castle courtyard. A scene filled with mass destruction and anarchy, all of the Hogwarts regime left in tatters. Flashes lit up the sky overhead the grounds.

Snape's back faced the wall made of glass. His eyes tracked his Master, and his slither-like motion towards him. The Dark Lord moved with an eerie non-gait that, coupled with the lack of nasal extremity, made him look, act, and walk 'snake'.

"You killed Dumbledore, Severus." His gray eyes peered into Snape's, daring him to open them further, to break the mold of his mask. "While you live, the Elder Wand cannot, truly be mine."

The words hung in the air, but...Severus hardly registered them. He was thinking about other things. Voldemort's voice was slow to reach his ears; the Dark Lord's power made Severus weak in the knees sometimes. It was like listening through a pipe to someone on the other side of a wall. It was like trying to spesk underwater.

And yet, he knew this day would come as soon as the dawn, if not sooner. His chin tipped upwards. He would not die a shameful man.

"You have been a good and faithful servant, Severus. But only I can live forever!"

Voldemort raised his wand and a sneer opened up a chasm across his face. Severus had hoped it wouldn't end for him like this. "My lord..."

Snape could not finish the sentence.

For the spell cut blood out of his neck; instead of spewing onto his Master's black, bleak cloak, it burbled softly and his dark-swathed body fell to the floor from the shock of the quick paralysing poison. His back rammed into the glass wall, forcing his teeth to clack painfully and the muscles in his neck to spasm. But, as was per limitations induced by the incantation, he was losing muscle control. His faculties, his breathing, they were slipping, sliding, slithering away...

_HISSSSSSS_.

Voldemort uttered something in the language called Parseltongue. Snape's mind was in far too much distress to understand it. Gods, his head must have hurt from the fall!

Hot blood bubbled from his wound; he could've screamed at the senselessness even more than the sting, the throbbing pain, the sharp prods of hot acid like suspense that prickled his body. But it did not hurt like he thought it would. Death's onset is surprisingly calm to a dying man.

In one moment, the seeping Snape felt the cold floor under his slack hands, the cold glass against his back, the warm blood that covered his chest as it rolled. The cold, staunch air froze his face.

Razors tore into his neck. He screamed, his illusion vanished, as the huge viper took his breath away. She landed heavily on him. She was a live, panting creature, and her slick body was engrossed in desire, for she wanted fresh blood. He yelled, having never done so in his life as he would ever admit, as her teeth snapped shut around a dangling strip of neck-flesh and tore it from him.

Beards and brothels, it should hurt so! It pierced the fabric of his soul, how it made him writhe in agony. Yet he could not move. Not even cry out. And he though he could not know it, all of his screams had been silent groans, bringing sadistic glee to his tormentor's face.

Nagini tore his throat up into pieces. She ripped at his flesh, leaving burning, broiling holes. His dark robes were no more their best black, but thoroughly stained.

The snake made a second full lunge. Snape's belly contracted; her writhing body atop him was too heavy to be real. It was then that he felt a huge pain in his abdomen, a lashing torture. The snake had ripped a gaping wound in his chest; the sting rendered him fully helpless. He could not cry. Could not move. Only grunt as the viper tore off his hanging, bloody flesh and writhed her way into his stomach. A slow, painful death this would be.

Nagini attacked him again. Nagini spliced his chest, cut near to his heart, near to his lungs. With each shallow breath, he found himself drowning. Drowning in blood. His own, his very own, as it poured down his throat, filling his lungs. _Where is Potter?_ he surely thought. _Where is Albus?_

Lily.

Lily was gone, but that goes without saying.

They would all have left him; they had all left him behind. He would die alone. She, a mere woman, had proven him wrong again; she predicted he would. She said it made her sad, but it was his own fault. His choice.

And she was, Gods, so right.

Voldemort cackled-Snape saw a final glimpse of his Master's white, pearly teeth, smiling sadistically down at his agony. Master called his pet to him, and the loud _CRACK _of apparation deafened Snape, and sent him spiraling fast into a deep, dark hole. His vision began to grow spotty and black.

Moments later, Potter walked in and tenderly cradled his head, and slowly watched him die.

* * *

He awoke pooled in blood, which he mistakenly thought at first was water or sickness, and found that he could not properly breathe without adhering rapt concentration to the simple task. He was at first startled, and a swift intake of air through his mouth subsequently caused him to feel a very sunken, empty feeling in the cavity of his chest. He realized that his punctured lungs were drawing from nothing, and his esophageal tract was leaking copious amounts of his own blood.

He collected that quickly, he was losing blood, and memories returned to him a second later, having left for the moment of his leap into consciousness from near-death. He realized that dead he was not, but dead he very well should have been.

His vision began to collapse and fade into gray-blackness, but a strange insurgence of pride pushed him –he could nearly feel the pressure building on his chest, in his heart, in his brain- to summon magic, using those well-practiced skills.

Using nonverbal magic, he conjured a Bezoar stone, held it in his mouth as he recited from mind, from memory, a powerful healing spell used to counter deadly serrations and close deep wounds.

Enough of him was still intact to recognize the healing properties of the Bezoar. He lay still for perhaps several minutes as he waited for the stone to take effect.

He discovered that he could move his hands, though their progress was very slow, and they twitched mercilessly whenever he sought to grip that cloak, or reach up to touch his skin. He performed _Accio, _which expended quite a bit of energy. He was aware of the pain as he had been aware of little else before. When he lost control of his hand, and it fell onto his gurgling stomach, he was aware of the shots of pain all over his arm. But then he felt the little glass vial nudging his hand, and grasped it, uncorked it, and swallowed the Blood-Replenishing potion, drop by drop.

He apparated the next morning to his flat in…you know where it is. He slept, drunk with the pain that had induced a lightness in his own head.

And now, the plunge.

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**So this is installment one-Derision, the introduction. Review, like, critique, dislike if you must (but I hope not, right?!) but give your feedback please!**

**Coming up- some insight from the narrator on Snape's life story, and a revelation or two.**


	2. The Ambience of Sadness

**Let's try this again, shall we? Hopefully the intro will show up this time. I hope that this chapter is well-liked, because I think that _for sure _I'm still trying to get into the swing of things. It's been overall positive, though, and I'm trying to keep ahead of the curve by writing one chapter ahead. That way, I can give you all lovely little spoilers at the bottom of te page as a reward for your time and effort.**

**I realize that I own none of these characters, though I would love to be able to claim them as my own. The plot is mine, the ideas are mine, but canon characters are property of their respective creators- J.K. Rowling, or Marvel Comics.**

* * *

SPOV

_CRASH!_

"**WHAT THE BLOODY HELL—"**

Pain coursed through his leg, spreading like wildfire, but acute like billions of daggers poking his skin. He attempted to heave himself up with one hand on the wood of the frame of the four-poster bed, and the other hand reaching for his wand.

"Aaarrggh…." He struggled to get up, realizing that he was no longer in his bed, but he had fallen to the floor sometime during the night. The bedroom was dark, and so dark that he could barely see his hands, or his legs sprawled on the carpet. With a dull _thud_, he fell prostrate again, and this time the pain was too great for him to bear. He felt true blackness seeping into his vision, and he succumbed again to sleep.

That same, fiery pain roused him again, and kicking away all the comfortable thoughts in his head, _how soft this carpet is…how warm I am…how warm my face feels, bathed in the sticky blood of my oozing wounds…_

He groaned. He moaned. He rolled onto his back, grimacing when he felt the cold air on his left pallid cheek. With trembling fingers, he raised his hand to touch his skin, and pulled his hand away stickily, covered as it was in viscous darkness. Snape had strength in his lungs to curse, and so he did. Muttering, he lay back on the floor, seeing for the first time in a long time the sad ceiling, an awfully distasteful dark color of green. He had not even picked it out; most of the décor in this house was left alone, original, untouched since the previous residents had tampered with it. Snape had little taste for decoration, in a residence he barely spent any time in since his adolescent years expired. He retched and retched, the sight of blood disgorging phlegm from his lungs and nothing else; Severus hadn't eaten a proper meal lately, and suddenly he was so sick that he wanted to die again.

Maybe it was the combination of the sight of so much blood, coupled with the insurgence of pain up his leg and the stinging cold air on his face. The nerves in his body were truly and sorely wracked to heaven; he was beyond repair. It wasn't that he couldn't move; it was that he didn't want to.

Get up, damn you.

"What?" he bellowed hoarsely. Had he heard a man speak? Inside his head? The room was dark, totally dark. He finally conjured the strength to sit up. Gasping for breath, cupping his hand against the stinging, oozing wound across his stomach, slowly he sat vertical. He had to scoot across the floor…the bed was so very near, if only he could reach it.

He leant with his back against the bed frame, his eyes rolling shut.

He fucking hoped he wouldn't start to hear strange voices in the night. So he looked around, saw all the things in his bedroom which he did not really want to see. The ugly dark oak door, the pattern-stitched wallpaper, the grotesque shimmer of broken glass on the old stained carpet—and that god-awful noise?—the sound of dripping ink. _Drip, _on to the broken glass. _Drop, _again. _Drip, _all the drops sliding off the shards and being soaked up by the dirty carpet fibres. His bookshelf stood a mess with tomes hanging off the edges of the shelves themselves, and some books were ripped open, ripped apart. The lamppost by the bed had its black shade thrown to one side. It leaned against that little corner the wall and the bed together made, a testament to the words, _leaning shoulder, falling man. Forgotten man._

Standing vertical was a murderous task; Severus was drunk to the point of stupidity. A little bit of yellow pus emerged from the neck wound and dropped onto his black cloak. Pain came over him, filling his head with kaleidoscopic hues and then garish images of the blood and sorrow he'd witnessed earlier. Of course he saw all the little children again, while grasping the bedpost with white knuckles. When he came back to himself, he was holding onto the curves of the post tightly, his abnormally large nose was pressed into the cold wood, his mouth hung slack. He felt all the "old-man" wrinkles in the creases of his eyes when he squinted to try to ward off the bombardment of images; he felt the miniscule creases of age and stress around his lips. He bared his teeth, clenched them, drawing the skin taut over his mouth and still the horrible pictures continued to plague him. He yelled hoarsely, not realizing that his breath was gone, that his lungs were empty, or that he had exhausted his throat from sobbing late into the night, and his screams, all contained safely within the barrier of his wards, so that the world wouldn't know his pain.

Snape hadn't touched a drop of whiskey in days—he stumbled to the bookcase and put his hands on one of the undisturbed volumes- _How to Boil Brains: A Potion Master's Guide to Advanced Alchemical Charms- _and pulled, revealing his study from behind a panel in the wall.

Inside he sealed the door again, casting a powerful ward on it, moved to the study wall and ignited a candle wordlessly, for such a menial task hardly required any concentration after the numerous varied complexities he had been casting of late, up until his—death, a few hours ago.

The reason he wasn't suffering any withdrawal pains had to do with the fact that, albeit rumours circled about his drinking habits often during his days as a teacher—he would soon need to recognize the fact that those days were over now, for good—he wasn't a regular at all, and never had been. For when he needed the burst that alcohol gave him, it was often at the most opportune of times that he felt the painful, head-splitting call, and he was forced to push away the nagging symptoms of his withdrawal. He had struggled through his first few years of teaching with this problem…until gradually, over the years, its unbearable pain lessened.

He threw open the doors of the nondescript cabinet, that dark frame hung sullenly on the wall. His long, pale hand reached for the flask, and as if drunk by the thought of the taste of the sweet liquid…his grip slipped, and the bottle crashed to the floor at his feet.

"Fuck."

His eyes cut downwards, staring at the glass. His frock coat was riddled with shards as well, and now he _knew _he'd have to clean that up. His bottom lip started to quiver. He felt…angry.

Angry.

He seethed with it.

It boiled up his blood. It was uncontrollable.

"Heeee-AAAARRRRGH!" Snape's fisted hands went through the glass panes, and blood instantly began to seep from the clenched wrinkles. He swept his palm across the shelf, knocking bottles of whiskey like porcelain dolls. A deafening crash resounded in the little room. His pink lip curled back over his white, ghostly teeth; with a shudder he drew away impulsively, as some crystal shards wounded him in the cheek and chin.

He pulled in a shaky breath. Slowly his hand touched his left pallid cheek—pulling it away and seeing the pinpricks of crimson blood only drove him mad.

He knocked the other flasks over, and crossed the room in a fury, turning over the antique leather chair. It was once Mother's, but not anymore. She was dead, now, and he didn't seem to care.

SPOV

_Severus Snape was a heartless, greedy old miser._

_Severus Snape was a bitter, old, vicious, profane alcoholic._

_Severus Snape was just a man._

_Severus Snape was a traitorous bastard with not a penny to his name._

_Severus Snape was a squanderer of riches and reputation._

_Severus Snape tossed away his inheritance for…_

SPOV

"_Lily…"_

_A pale hand, a beautiful outstretched hand, beckoned to him._

_Her fingernails were a pretty crème color, smooth like her skin was milk white._

_The lady in the river's face was so beautiful that no man could have taken his eyes from hers, nor described properly to anyone the beauty which he saw…it was a wholly indescribable, incapacitating experience._

_Just one man could not withstand the magnetic pull that seared through him, emanating from his chest and from that place where his thighs quivered, oh, so delicately. A boy of eighteen was reduced to silent sobs and a throbbing heart before this lady._

_She was like a goddess. Her hair peeled away from her luminescent skin. There was no wind to tease the fire-red locks into motion, but still they moved brilliantly! They enticed him with their soft strokes upon each other. They created whispers…whispers in his ear._

_He saw her hand there. He reached for her fingers, so thin and perfect, but when he touched her skin the strangest thing happened to him. His flesh on her fingertips was feeling her fingertips at the nape of his neck, in the sensitive place that would make any mortal man's desire swell and his heart quicken like a horse's. He nearly gasped aloud at the sensual feeling. His eyes…drifted to a close and he let his feet take him one step closer to the goddess before him. His dexterous fingers—even then, they were skilled in their art—traveled past the pad of her hand, feeling the smooth indentation of her palm. As they moved up her wrist, so slowly, so delicately, so did the invisible other hand of the lady, travel slowly up his neck. It was her touch that sent him shivering, left him quivering, and he was begging for her just to speak to him again. To say his name. Nothing would satisfy his desire more wholly._

_The fingers came to a crest at the peak of his fleshy earlobe, and they slowly encircled his aural orifice. A moan escaped his lips, the noise turning to dust in the air that was too calm and full of magic to be broken by words._

_He felt himself being stripped bare, and he was willing to leave himself vulnerable before this beautiful woman. Even if she was only an ether child and not the true form of the woman, Lily, come to him in his dreams, she left him young and throbbing, and he in his adolescent desires was trapped. Her hand traced the contour of his shoulder. She allowed him to tentatively touch her neck, and he brushed away the long hair that had fallen over her shoulder. He realized then that what his fingers brushed against was not sweet, sweet skin, but a garment like silk, though he was not aware she was even clothed. All in his mind was a beauty of white light, with her head and hands and arms and face defined._

"_Oh, Lily…" he tried to say. Her fingers materialized upon his lips, quieting him._

_Then all of a sudden, her hands were there gripping his face, holding his head carefully, her eyes looking at him with sadness. Her emerald green eyes shone with tears, and he watched them in horror morph into a cold stare, visibly, as plain as a man can see water turn to ice. Her fingers dug into his skin and she tossed him backwards, he hurtled through the sky—_

NPOV

A very large bell tolled, high overhead, where the rafters rose.

Perhaps it was the London bell tower, or perhaps it was just the imagination wandering.

The Ministry was huge, and it was eerily quiet.

A few bodies lay there, next to the white marble statue. That centerpiece of rebellion, of the uprising of the Dark Forces, would eventually become a symbol of irony. The crushed mortals' faces, each contorted in the agony they felt at the time of their death, was frozen forever into the white stone. Oh, here and there, little stains of pink dried fluid stained the sculpture.

Today, they would cut it down. Today, the survivors would return to their haven, the palace that they all thought to seek out refuge in, but instead the place which became the hideout of evil and sinister doings of the gravest accord.

The dark walls were glaring down at every soul that walked the walls of the forsaken Ministry, for the whole country was still reeling in shock and deep pain, after only four days of the war's close.

An order had been administered this very morning, mailed to the press offices from an undisclosed address, and handwritten by the so-claimed "Newest Minister of Magic". It was signed into authenticity by a friend of Kingsley Shacklebolt, who was the only other available and nearby Ministry employee. Shacklebolt ordered that any man or woman found to be knowingly harboring a Death Eater inside his or her home was to be summoned to the Ministry, where they would be floo'ed directly to Askaban. It was unwritten in the margins that, perhaps they would receive a fair trial one day. Perhaps not. It all depended on how quickly Shacklebolt, the Wizarding World's newest leader, could sort out the mess of things, and how patient he was with traitorous lowlifes. Also, a search was commissioned to apprehend any loose 'leftovers' and remove them to Askaban, and snuff out the ones that were unwilling to face their life sentence.

Shacklebolt had stayed at Hogwarts' School throughout the fateful night of the war, but the next morning he departed swiftly to not even Minerva McGonagall knew where. The sun was rising on the rubble of Hogwarts, and for once, Kingsley could not say that today was a new day.

Before he Apparated, he knelt in the sand and touched the ground. He felt like kissing it, to know that half the souls that had been among the living just twelve hours before would not now, not ever again experience such a simple pleasure. His smile was grim; it was fake. He smiled for the youngest children, to see them happy to just be alive was a reckoning enough, but he knew what he needed to do. Reluctantly, and with great inability to decide, he knew what he must do.

This was a terribly fragile time for the Order. It was a Rebirth, and he would be starting all over again from the ground up. Literally.

NPOV

Hermione Granger watched the very same sunset from the lip of the Astronomy Tower.

She watched the sky turning slowly pink, thinking of roses and pretty things, and how clichéd it was to notice that something so beautiful, like the dawn of a new day, could rise from the ashes, so to speak, of the blackest night—Hogwarts' darkest hour.

Still, it was a terribly nice morning.

Hermione rubbed her arms, because in the chilly air she felt the breeze through her light jacket. Her fingers touched the rips in the fabric, all the way up her arms.

She sighed softly. "It's so hard to believe," Hermione whispered, "I've been through so much with this jacket, Mum, Dad. And…and I can't really keep _you_, now can I? Not looking like this…"

The feelings were almost too overwhelming. Hermione sniffled a little bit, willing herself not to cry again. Nobody would notice her, she thought, even if she returned to the fray teary-eyed. Not even Ron, or Harry. Well, maybe Ron. Ron just seemed to like her so very much. He was a bumbling, sometimes a moronic coward, but she had just recently come to the conclusion that maybe, that was cute. And he cared about her, which was all that mattered to her.

There was blood showing through her clothes, and her ladies' jeans from three days ago were torn to shreds at the knees, but she was alive.

Hermione was thanking her lucky smarts for having survived when, suddenly, the door opened below her. Someone else's footsteps crossed the observatory deck, clacked up the stairs, and padded up behind her. Hermione hung her head, a little bit nervous. Who needed her now? All she wanted was a moment of peace, for once she didn't want to help!

"Oi, 'Mione," a familiar feminine voice said. Ginny patted her on the arm. "Coming down to be with the rest of us? Or do you just want to stay up here all alone all day?"

Hermione looked out over the Black Lake, maybe trying to see into the depths. She thought she saw a mer-creature crest a wave in the middle of the frothy lagoon. The lake was so beautiful, and the trees contrasted just perfectly with the dark water. It was all so mesmerizing and it enchanted her, in a way that it never had before. She rested her elbows on the ledge and tapped her chin with her fingers in thought.

Ginny appeared uncomfortable next to her, unaware that Hermione had been so fazed out of reality that she hadn't really registered—or heard—Ginny come in.

"…I can just tell them you want to be alone, then. Right." She cleared her throat awkwardly, and walked away.

Hermione looked over her shoulder at her friend slowly retreating, and thought, _Since when did I become so intimidating? I thought we were…friends? What have _I _done wrong?_

"Oh, Ginny, please wait!" Ginny turned just in time to receive a huge, crushing hug from Hermione, who had summarily become suddenly much less melancholy.

Hermione searched Ginny's blushing face for a peep of a smile, but she was sad all over. The Weasleys had lost a boy during the war, after all. Hermione wanted to be there for Ginny, and especially for Ron, but she had to admit that it wa all a little scary. She didn't have anything that compared to what they were feeling—but they had all lost good friends in the war, and family as well. In more ways than just one—to death.

Hermione recoiled and wrapped her arms around herself as she drifted back to thoughts of her parents.

_I guess the only rule is to survive, _thought Hermione, _one way or the other._

She tried to smile. Ginny smiled, too, to match her friend. "How's Harry?" she asked.

"Harry's just happy to still be alive!" Ginny answered, and then said, "We all are."

Hermione nodded. It was very humbling to be standing in the place where s many of the people she knew—had died. Images of Lavendar Brown flashed to the forefront of her mind, and she remembered feeling pity even for her, as Greyback slowly drained her life away.

"Well," Hermione cleared her throat, "I'll be down soon. I just need to think."

Ginny touched her friend's arm, and Hermione loved her friend that much more in that second for being so deeply understanding. She nodded and left Hermione alone with her thoughts. There were so many questions that Hermione had left, so many unanswered…so many overlooked in the face of everyone's grief.

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**Not much happening in the way of plot in this chapter. Snape's started off naughty and difficult to write. Any suggestions, readers? I'm struggling with how his inner self sounds right now-I try to make it relfect the impression I have of him, and I'm sure things will get easier with time.**


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